Chapter 57. The Heavenly Nobleman (天乙貴人) 1.
Seo Uitaek's camp was on the western side, near the West Gate.
Because it occupied a crucial position within the Nine Fortresses, each gate was entrusted to commanding officers.
There was a barracks not far from the gate tower, and he alone occupied the main hall at its center.
He did not share it with the other commanders.
He believed himself to be a special being, different from the rest, a man destined to rise high, and therefore one who must be set apart from others.
His mind was crowded with thoughts.
He had said he would take responsibility, but what was he supposed to do now?
Should he simply wait for punishment to be handed down?
The general who had changed his words would not spend the coming hours speaking on his behalf.
He had wanted to become commander of the Northern Expeditionary Army.
Had that hope, too, come to ruin?
At such a time, the best outcome would have been for the general to declare that he himself would take responsibility, step down, and appoint Seo Uitaek as his successor.
But he did not.
Seo Uitaek had not dared ask for it.
What more could he say to a man who had told him to bear the blame?
He had done as he was told, acted as he was ordered, yet obedience alone did not raise a man upward.
He had no way to master the loneliness gathering in his heart, when suddenly he heard a sound beside his ear, thin as the whine of a mosquito.
"Seo Uitaek. Come out."
Seo Uitaek started violently and shouted,
"Who's there?"
It was a deliberate reaction, meant to summon the men around him with the force of his voice.
Yet no one came running.
The soldier who should have been standing at the door did not appear.
Nor did the officers staying in the servants' quarters across the way.
The air around him seemed wrapped in layers of cotton, swallowing sound into itself.
"Who is it? Come out!"
He shouted again, but his voice sank away as though absorbed into a heap of wool.
He drew his sword.
"Come out! Show your face!"
Only then did he realize that the voice he had heard was the transmitted speech said to exist only in legends.
In this fortress, the only ones capable of such a thing were the sages.
Why had the sages come?
Because of the death of Baek In-gyeom's disciple.
Were these men here to blame him?
Seo Uitaek shouted,
"I have done no wrong. I merely punished a man guilty of insubordination."
At that moment Baek Eun revealed himself like a ghost.
A human shape slowly emerged from the darkness,
as though form itself were gathering out of empty air.
"You forgot that he was on your side."
"You…"
"The reason he defied his superior was to save his comrades."
"Whatever the reason, wrong is wrong."
"Yes. Then you, who killed one of your own, had the private right to enforce the law?"
Seo Uitaek tried to excuse himself.
"I did not do it."
"You must have ordered it done."
"Yes. I did not do it myself."
"If you admit your wrongdoing here and now, and write a confession with your own hand, I will spare you."
It was useless.
It was a cunning fraud, meant to trick him into handing a written confession to the one who intended to execute judgment.
"I cannot do that."
"Then even the Seo clan of your home village will be extinguished."
"What? My family too?"
"You refuse to acknowledge even your own death. If you die, do you think your main household will remain quiet? The matter has grown this large. There is no way they do not already know."
Seo Uitaek drew a great breath.
"It was not I. The general ordered it."
"You are all the same. If someone orders you, do you obey? Would you raise a blade against your own father if commanded?"
"He is not my father."
Too many words.
He wanted to live.
Because he wanted to live, he reached for any logic he could drag before him.
Then a sharp slicing sound cut the air.
Something flew through the darkness and struck Seo Uitaek across the cheek.
"Ahh!"
His face snapped sideways under the blow of something flat.
"Aaaagh!"
"You will keep getting hit until you do it properly."
"I do not know."
The other side was struck.
His face whipped the opposite way.
After taking several blows, Seo Uitaek cried out,
"What is it you want?"
"Write that you bear all responsibility and beg forgiveness."
"And then you will let me live?"
Baek Eun shook his head.
"No. You will die anyway."
"Then why make me write it?"
"Your family will live. If not, I intend to wipe out your whole house."
"What wrong has my household committed?"
"Well then, perhaps their fault was giving birth to a creature like you."
"This is madness…"
"In any case, that is how I see it. You are going to die regardless. If you think your household is none of your concern, then I will leave not a single one of them alive. The women will become slaves."
Baek Eun's words were cold and hard.
"I killed one man guilty of insubordination. Was that such a grave crime?"
"Shall I list all your crimes to date?"
"What?"
Baek Eun threw him a book that looked like a register of secret shame.
Inside it were recorded, in full detail, all the crimes Yoon Jiwoong had committed.
These were things Yoon Jiwoong himself had written down in order to save his own life.
Through him, the many outrages committed by Seo Uitaek had been described with brutal realism.
— He colluded with Jurchen leaders, sent them two hundred bows, and received silver ingots of Song as payment.
— He sent Commander Park Deukrip to the vanguard, then cut off his retreat so he would die.
— He took Jurchen ginseng and furs, and handed over the deployment status of the Nine Fortresses, on such-and-such month and day, to one Alhalchepmoka.
— He sent an assassin after Lee Youngwoo and paid silver in advance for the deed.
— By order of the general, he investigated the corruption of Park Cheolgu. He bribed five soldiers under him and learned the truth. The man had reported the war situation falsely, dressing up results not yet achieved as though they had already been accomplished. He reported this and received silver ingots.
— He intercepted supplies headed for the South Gate and made it appear as though the supplies had never arrived. The entire train of wagons was handed over to the Jurchens.
— He sent separate reports on the war situation in the Nine Fortresses to Gaegyeong. In particular, he emphasized Lee Heesong's incompetence.
There were countless things written there that could scarcely be spoken aloud.
He was the sort of man who used unlawful means with extraordinary viciousness to force through his own designs.
"No… what is this?"
"It is Yoon Jiwoong's hidden record."
"I know nothing of it."
"Of course. Yoon Jiwoong did it. Yet Yoon Jiwoong says you ordered all of it…"
"Because he wrote it down, does that make it all my doing?"
Baek Eun shook his head.
This was a man beyond words.
He asked one final time, as though this were the last chance.
"So. Will you do it or not?"
Seo Uitaek stared toward the outside.
He had shouted on purpose, answered loudly on purpose, yet no one had come to help him.
A suspicion rose within him: perhaps these men would rather see him dead.
As though reading that thought, Baek Eun said,
"No one is coming. I sealed off all sound."
"How?"
"It is a difficult technique. Harder to explain."
"Ah…"
At last Seo Uitaek gave up.
"Then just kill me. I have done nothing wrong. Everything I did was for the country…
None of it was done merely so that I alone might prosper.
If anyone looked closely, they would know that…
So I have no intention of writing any confession.
If you wish to wipe out my family too, then do it.
You will be the ones who must explain what wrong they committed."
The wicked are usually shameless.
At that moment, someone spoke.
"What more is there to say?"
"That is so."
Baek Eun's body moved in a flash.
Where he passed, Seo Uitaek's neck sagged helplessly.
His carotid artery had been cut.
Seo Uitaek writhed in his death struggle.
Blood sprayed in every direction, and before even half a quarter-hour had passed, the man became a corpse.